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Formula One: Red Bull makes updates in final push before Melbourne

Sebastian Vettel was happy about the progress of his Red Bull Racing F1 car Friday during testing for Melbourne. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Red Bull will debut a major update package for is RB8 at Barcelona on Saturday as preparations for Melbourne reach a climax.

McLaren also will have an aero update package for the MP4-27.

Sebastian Vettel was positive about progress after setting the third-best time on Friday, despite losing time with a stoppage on track.

“It was quite a messy day because of the fog and there were quite a lot of red flags out there, so it was hard to get into a good rhythm,” the double champion said. “We had our own stoppage on the circuit, but it was no problem. It’s never nice to stop but we brought the car back and it wasn’t a big problem. We didn’t fulfill the program entirely but I think we are heading in a good way.

“I have one more day to go, and so far testing has gone pretty well. Not perfect of course--it never is--but all in all I feel quite happy in the car. It’s more or less what we expected, and hopefully we’ll have another two good days to prepare for the first race.”

Concerning the updates, Vettel added: “The last couple of days of testing are always quite important as you always bring a few new things and it’s much closer to the car you will race in Melbourne. So we’ll see if that works out and hopefully we’ll be able to make another small step forward before the first.”

Vettel’s race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin said that it has been a good day on Friday. “The fog this morning wasn’t ideal but the circuit was very good in giving everybody an extension and we did get a decent amount of laps in. However, even when the session did get going it was a fairly choppy start as there were a lot of red flags, and as Sebastian said, it was difficult to find a rhythm.

“But Seb got through most of the program, which today was just background testing stuff; we weren’t focusing on performance at all. There are a lot of boxes we need to tick to go racing, and we got quite a few done today.”